


Blue and White and Red All Over

by dropout_ninja



Series: A Million Shards of Glass [3]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Billy Hargrove Is Bad at Feelings, Billy Hargrove Lives, Developing Friendships, Dysfunctional Family, Family, Fix-It of Sorts, For Want of a Nail, Friendship, Gen, Heather Holloway Lives, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Independence, Moving On, Moving Out, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Repairing Relationships, Season 3 AU, Step-siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25104436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dropout_ninja/pseuds/dropout_ninja
Summary: On the night of November 5th, 1984, Billy Hargrove stumbles across a monster in the fridge of the Byers's household.  On the night of June 29th, 1985, Billy finds himself stumbling across the monsters of Hawkins again.And, instead of lingering outside the Steel Mill, he does the most reasonable thing his mind can come up with: he runs.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield
Series: A Million Shards of Glass [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1472507
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	1. Prologue: Families

**Author's Note:**

> Stranger Things and its characters do not belong to me. All rights go to their respective owners.
> 
> It's already been a year since season 3 aired? Guess an anniversary is a good enough time to get back to writing for this fandom.  
> This is a follow up to chapter 4 of Am I Dreaming. The premise of the chapter is, in short, that Billy found the demodog in the Byers's fridge after his fight with Steve and so is 'in' on the whole monster secret before ever having to run headfirst into the Mindflayer.  
> Just like in that fic, Billy here has moved out of the Hargrove house and graduated (as that was the impression that season had left me with at the time I wrote the first fic).  
> As in that fic as well, there will be some references to the book Runaway Max here.  
> Warning wise, this will include canon typical violence, sexual nods, language, abuse, slurs, horror situations, etc. It shouldn't exceed that canon typical content. Warnings will likely be given per chapter. As it centers around Billy, expect some very flawed thinking (especially early on).  
> Finally, this is unbeta'd and, while I strive to catch errors, it is inevitable some English mistakes slip through. If you notice any glaring grammar/spelling errors, feel free to point them out so I can correct them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy thinks on family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This prologue is told through flashback and present. Expect both to blur and meld in this chapter. The writing style here will be replaced with more structured writing for the following chapters.  
> Warning for canon typical slurs in the form of homophobic language, canon typical cussing, emotional abuse, and the attempted affair that made many of us highly uncomfortable at the start of S3. Billy is a highly unreliable narrator and his perception of people should be taken with a grain of salt.

_December, 1984_

A week prior, this cavern had been full of the dying and noise.

Four days prior, this tunnel system had been visited by teams dragging up the bodies of the alien army in order to burn the evidence of their presence away. 

And now they were still in the process of being scrubbed. One member of that team looked at the empty tunnels with a far different interest than the other remains of what had been the now-disbanded Hawkins branch of the Department of Energy.

The days after, he reached out to those also sharing that interest. Those sleeping agents who hid in plain sight and those who lay in the motherland still. 

Four weeks after, the empty lab was visited. The original cleaning crew member was met by allies. He led them to the lift and sent the group down into the depths of a tunnel system spanning from the closed gateway to the border of the town. 

_Will it work?_ he had asked in many more words than that. 

The others had examined the framework of tunnels already left behind by the world they were seeking to enter. It would allow them to construct their own tunnel system; the digging done for them in so many locations would cut back time in their construction process for a base. A base so large that, if not properly hidden above, would be sure to get unwanted attention. 

_It would do._

They would need to reach for those on the surface that would cover their tracks.

And the Hawkins mayor would be that man for them. 

They had no plans on letting this opportunity for contact pass them up. 

* * *

* * *

_Summer, 1977_

When he was a child, Billy Hargrove had loved family. 

He'd loved a lot of things as a child. 

Sand. Seagulls. Waves. 

That straw hat with the blue bow. The unique laughter of his parents. The chuckles of his father and the pride of his mother. 

Still a child, Billy had found out a few of his own truths on family. 

And, as a child- just a little older than the one of before- he'd stopped loving many things. 

His dad hadn't had the trust to appreciate that family they'd had. His mom hadn't had the safety to want to stay with that family. 

The father and son had differing memories on her departure. Billy remembered it coming after she'd bled from her head, after her head had connected with a countertop, after he'd been slammed into a cabinet for trying to stand in the way of that blow. Neil's words suggested his memories of the night were stuck in an affair that Billy's mother swore to him in private was never happening. He'd always claim that she was trying to run off on them. It was one of the few times he'd refer to the two of them as a _them_. 

Billy wouldn't care. Not about the phrasing, not about a father and son being family, not about the lies his dad was always using as an excuse to leave purple over his mom's tan skin. He shouldn't have even had to hear the word affair at that age or the many ages before it that Neil spat the accusation. 

When she'd called him after she'd left for good, he'd heard the voice. A man's voice. Behind his mom's before she'd turned from the receiver to shush him. 

Maybe he was new. Maybe he'd always been there. Billy thought he was new. He thought it could be incidental. A friend. Someone to help her. She needed it. With the way the blood had dripped off her forehead onto the offwhite countertop, she'd needed someone's help so badly. 

Billy could've helped her, he swore to himself on the floor of his room with the phone cord tangled around his clasping hands. 

Billy wanted to, it was all he wanted to do, it was her, her staying, not here but with him-

_Please come back_

It didn't have to be this house. 

She didn't have to come to this place where his father was.

She just had to come back to him and then they could both leave.

Why wouldn't she come back for him?

Eventually the phone calls stopped. There'd been so very few of those. 

Eventually, the cards never came to that address. He'd never managed to send any back in return. She hadn't ever put a return address on. 

Eventually his _dad_ became _Neil_ and the divide between them festered. 

It had always been there, to a degree. Nothing like it was as the years passed, but there had always been a bit of an unease built out of the little gestures or lack thereof. 

In years far past, he'd wait for his dad to return and then squeal when he was carried around the house. There'd be laughter; it would come from both of them. There'd be great meals and his dad would be there, sitting at the head of the family and bragging about the food to his son with a smile sent to both the child and the woman setting the dishes out. There'd be little races in the living room with the Hot Wheels his dad had spent oh so much money buying for him while his mom cheered for him from her seat (she never did take one into her hands to race around when Neil was present, but Billy hadn't much noted that at that age). He'd be so happy to get the attention from his dad when he returned and chased him around. Sometimes, he'd get grabbed and nurse tender skin for the days after. It would sting to touch and Billy had known even then that he did not like that pain but-

but it was worth it, wasn't it? because it let his father laugh with him. That was what dads were for. He wasn't enough of a wuss to cry over some bruises. 

It wasn't for a few years that he noticed how upset his mom would get at hearing his dad say words like 'wuss' or its counterpart to him. 

_He's your son,_ she'd say. _How can you hurt your son like that?_

He was never _our_ son in those conversations, even if he was often _my_ son when she spoke on other occasions. 

And his father never responded to those conversation prompts with anything except a reprimand that (at the time he thought) was gently reminding her to let him treat his boy like a man, or a command to be quiet, and sometimes- at the worst- a yell. 

It occurred to him later that Neil never did listen to his wife. How was a man expected to satisfy a woman if he never listened? Neil never stopped to consider that maybe that lack of satisfaction would drive her to a different man. At the time, Billy only thought she was driven away because the hurt, the lack of trust, the blows, the blood, the tears. 

Maybe he was more right with his young perception. Maybe his more cynical sight of the matter was twisted and inaccurate. Maybe it just didn't matter. 

She couldn't have been expected to stay alone forever. The voice on the phone could have been a friend or a stranger or something more. It didn't change anything. She couldn't have been expected to remain with Neil and she couldn't have been expected to live her life completely isolated from love and care after leaving him.

But she _could_ be expected to return to that dangerous place just long enough to take him. 

When she'd left, his father had lost all the charm a younger Billy had once adored him through the lens of. Neil was proud of him coming back from school roughed up and loudly angry when he returned from the beach without scuffles. Fighting was a boy's game. Swimming and surfing was for the lazy bums that couldn't bother to be the self sustaining man a family and country depended on. _Did he raise his son to be a boy or one of those blond fags?_

But of course _he_ had. It was his _mother_ who'd ruined him. It was the woman's influence. It was never Neil's fault. 

Billy took that trait from the modeling his father did. 

Billy took a lot of traits from the man's modeling. 

He took his fair share from his mother as well. But those...They were not the idealistic, the perfections, the beautiful purity that his childhood memories painted her with. They were those of her actions and traits that left him bitter. 

_Take the bad,_ it would go. 

_Take the bad,_ because what the hell would he know what to do with the good? 

* * *

_Summer, 1985_

Eight years after a mother had left her child, Billy Hargrove sped down the shitty roads of Hawkins in the cover of a summer night's darkness. 

The town was awful and so much a far cry from California and hid its own dark side under government conspiracy, but it wasn't _completely_ stifling. And that night? He'd had plans for that night.

Billy had driven to that Motel with all the knowledge that he'd be tearing a family apart before the morning. 

Maybe it was Neil talking- maybe it was Neil suggesting that this was a conquest of successful masculinity and a way to prove that wives this age were just so ready to jump on an affair that would ruin everything for their family, their children- but he sure was used to hearing Neil talking in the way his thoughts formed. He'd had to hear so much of the man's voiced thoughts for so long after his mother had left him in Neil's grip all those years ago that they were a constant (if subdued) presence in his own thoughts.

Years ago it may have been, but he was still bitter, still aching, about his mother's departure. Billy didn't put that fact to words very often. In fact, he had ignored their presence for long enough that he almost truly had convinced his memories that they'd never been put to words before (but oh how they had and had for years). 

What he _would_ recognize (and, in fact, find a reassuring brag) was how different the Billy Hargrove of 1985 was from the Billy Hargrove of 1977. He'd become everything that child never was and never wanted to be. Where that kid was soft, the adult was covered in well worked musculature. Where that kid had never wanted to touch a weight, the adult didn't spend more than a day without lifting. Where that kid was weak and easily brought to tears, the adult was confident in his own ability to bring others to tears.

Or he had been for a while. He'd been so very confident in that power during his last two years of high school.

Those were the shitiest years as well. 

Living with the Mayfield's was bad enough. Billy had tried to just flow with it most of the time, but any of those pretenses drowned after Neil started making it clear that he was acting out of line with every little breath he took. Neil was just so caught up with his image of a family. It was a joke to his son. There couldn't be a family for them anymore. His mom was gone. This new woman who couldn't lift her voice and didn't have a single friend (his mom had friends even when his dad found fault with all of them) and just melted at a bouquet brought from man she barely knew- she couldn't be his family. No way in hell. His mom was strong and this Susan was weak; his mom was tall and brave and this Susan lady seemed to be so hunched over herself even when she was standing tall; his mom was _his mom_ and this Susan was his dad's shitty replacement for a dream that was never going to be realized. 

The first attempt at a perfect nuclear had exploded on Neil's face because the man was too paranoid of every visit to a friend and too disgusted at every moment shared between mother to son to ever accept it. That wasn't family, not according to Neil. A family would be those once-nice images from childhood: a hardworking father who returned to a wife that only dressed up for him and him alone and had a table of food ready and stood back to support the two men of the family in happy muteness. A son that had to be respectful, boyish, bold- the perfect all-american boy with a natural touch at baseball and an interest in wooing the little girls with singular acts of strength. 

A daughter hadn't been in the equation then because all he'd had then was Billy. But this Susan...she brought a little girl with her. Neil doted on her, when Max allowed it. He let her get away with shit because she was a girl and Susan's kid and Susan was always so good about making sure she tried to get her child to be as much a woman as the mother was. Now _Billy's mom,_ she'd supported her son in his ventures when she obviously should have been pushing him towards wrestling and sports and guns and whatever else Neil thought he needed. _She_ was _obviously_ a disgrace to motherhood. Susan- no matter if her daughter didn't listen to her mom's pushing- was just _so much better_ than the other. 

Billy hated how easily Neil expected him to just accept this stupid woman and her stupid daughter and pretend like his real mother had never even existed. 

Billy still hated it, when his mind actually brought the subject of his mother up. 

For a few years, he'd tried to put up with it. He'd taken his anger out on the kids at school that couldn't fight back, because wasn't that just what Neil had modeled for him with his mom and himself? He'd return to the new 'Hargrove' house (only Neil seemed oblivious at how Max and Susan had not taken the name) without feeling full to the brim with frustration. Back at that time, he was apathetic with Max at worse and almost alright with her at best. When Neil was gone on the weekends, the little ten year old would rope him into trying to get her hair as curly as his own with the tools Susan kept for her own sloppy hair. One time Neil had come back early and found him doing it and then tugged him away from his step sister to his room to 'talk' to him in that quiet rage of his over what being a 'queer' would mean for any boy in his household. Billy had never said yes to Max's wheedling attempts to get his help on hair again. As time passed, Max had picked up reasons to avoid his presence and stopped asking for those favors altogether.

Midway through high school, their avoidance evolved again. He'd gotten his car by then and, so long as he was 'responsible' and 'respectful', Neil let him use it without taking the keys as punishment often. Max had been on the wrong end of his anger and tearing words enough to keep away from him most of the time. She was still a kid though. A kid with good enough taste to understand what a nice car looked like and a kid lacking enough experience to want her 'brother' back. She obviously hadn't realized just how impossible the laughable idea of them being real siblings was yet. 

The day that she'd come out cautiously into the garage and asked him to show her around the car saw a change to their dynamic again. He'd given her a camel just to see how far she was willing to take her still-present (if cautiously subdued) idolization of him. In answer, she'd taken it and would've smoked it as long as he pressured her to if Susan hadn't come into the garage and torn the moment apart.

Even after she left, he'd gotten an answer to that curiosity. Max was malleable. Max disliked him from the fights and anger and insults but she still idolized him for being the teen that was so popular in school and had a ride like this and once- just rarely- offered her glimpses of someone she'd have been happy to be in a family with. 

It was a perfectly dangerous combination. He'd thought of Neil, hated the comparison and loathed himself for the weakness, and then shoved that thought away after accepting it as clinical proof for his hypothesis: that combination Max had would let him tug her around any direction he so pleased.

It had felt so much more like control to tug her around than to beat a teen to pulp after school. Both gave him power that Neil had kept away from him for a lifetime.

And any guilt?

Any guilt had just been inaccessible when there were memories of Neil telling him (silently, wordlessly, but with a power he could imagine ignoring and in reality never could) to hold still in front of both Mayfield's while his belt buckle tore skin open. Maybe it was wrong, but hell if he cared. He hated Max. Despised her, despised Susan...but mostly despised Max. Despised how she let him walk all over her. Despised how she knew the power Neil held over him and pitied him for it. Despised the fact that she still gave a damn over his opinion and didn't just cut the care away so that she could tell him and his ill treatment to go to hell. Susan was a weak romantic that had to ask Neil for everything. But Max was the one he could see himself in and he hated everything he saw. 

Or...

he had. 

He _had_. 

And then the fall of 1984 had come. Max had grown that backbone and cut his play with her to a shortstop. It had been such an integral part of his anger in the last two years that her victory should have mattered so much more to him.

The thing in the Byers's fridge had given him far more to think about. 

Their eventual fight on the matter hadn't helped things go back to that sick normal. The cop Max had made him go to had begrudgingly explained the _truth_. The kid that greeted Max with a smile and then stared into his very head had only further solidified that truth. 

Max had been keeping a whole other world hidden. 

And here he at her age was just focused on the whirlwind of his father marrying again. 

The truth made everything else seem pale in comparison. But he was hardly a part of this 'party'. He was hardly a part of this world. His only role in that _truth_ had been to interrupt the safety of what was apparently a safe house by breaking in and beating Harrington to a bloody mess. 

There was a new lens to things to be sure, but he only had the monster that had dropped its slimy dead self onto him when he'd opened the Byers's fridge to remember it by. It was his only time truly confronting that reality and so, after the turbulence of turning eighteen, finding odd jobs, graduating early, and officially splitting away from the Hargrove household, Billy couldn't say it truly affected his day to day perception.

So Billy Hargrove drove through Mirkwood towards Motel 6 without a thought on those strange matters; driving there with the intention of getting a thrilling night and not giving a damn for the ruined family that one night of thrill would leave in the wake- 

-but the dark side of Hawkins had its own intentions for the night and it was those that would see to their fulfillment. 


	2. The Catalyst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something strangely familiar causes a car accident and sets events in motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait. ST isn't my primary fandom and so updates here are going to be slow until I get more involved in the fandom again. In any case, please enjoy the next chapter!

The crash came without warning.

Sure, he'd been looking towards the passenger seat too often. Smiling at an imaginary passenger, making small talk. Practicing. Getting readied up. Maybe he'd been looking to the side too many times for too long. Maybe he'd missed a deer crossing into the road. 

Didn't matter. He'd still crashed, whatever the reasons or excuses offered. 

His first thoughts trickled in too slow. They allowed him to put into mental words the fact that, oh, look at that, he _hurt_. His ribs ached sharply. Something wet was matted on the side of his forehead, completely ruining all the effort he'd taken into styling up to perfection that night. It ached too. Or pulsed in time with his veins and that heavy pulsing seemed to rattle his brain in sync. 

After pounding at the wheel responsible for the cut on his head in cathartic rage, Billy felt for the handle and pushed his way out of the car. _His_ car. His first real possession and one that he kept in very, very good state. A piece of shit. 

There was enough moonlight to see by outside. He propped himself up against the door and then began his stilted slide over to the windshield where he'd seen a spread of cracks after first regaining his processes. Something had hit the car there. Whatever it was, it was responsible for ruining his car, his evening, and his gleeful mood. And if it was something someone hiding out in this shitty building (a steel mill, the rundown sign visible in the moonlight said) threw at the car passing by, well. They'd do best hiding now before he pounded their skull in.

Steam hissed up from whatever had broken the front window. Billy leaned over the hood cautiously and dipped two fingers against the hissing mark, drawing it back with a squelch.

What the hell?

It seemed to burn against the glass pane. The smear on his fingertips was icy cold. 

Something screeched, a tiny sound, rodential really, but enough to make his heart rate spike once more. The wet shit on his fingers steamed, just as it had on the car. It stuck there, slimed there, like- ...like a slimy tan plastic interior holding in the corpse of some freakish lizard dog thing. Billy was quick to rub it against his pants (nice pants) (pants he'd picked specifically for this night to look his most bad-boy appealing) (ruined pants now, slimed with something nasty) even as the cut on his head pulsed and the crash's impacts made his own ability to push off of the hood slowed.

In November of that last fateful year, he'd found something else with this sort of unnatural sticky nasty presence. He'd found it in that fridge, at a house of freaks and weirdos, looking for something cold to drink and take the edge off the sedatives Max had dumped in him.

He'd found out a whole lot of other things in the weeks following. Psychic kids. Evil labs. Faceless monsters. 

Despite having been rubbed clean, his fingertips still burned as if the slime was still there. 

Something rustled in the brush nearby. There was the faintest clinking, like something had fallen over or rolled in the trashy building he'd crashed outside of. His fingers kept burning cold.

A part of him was sorely tempted to start yelling. _Who's there? Answer me, who's there?_ But- 

Those fingers burned like the glass of his precious car's window. 

The window still steamed, hissing up, rising from something that reminded him of the coating film in that fridge. 

The noises around him set him off and maybe- really- he didn't want to know who was there. 

Ignoring the fact that his prized possession for the last few years was a damaged wreck and the fact that his forehead was bleeding and aching, Billy Hargrove stumbled away from his ruined car and hit the roadside at a run.

* * *

Running from the steel mill to the suburbs of Hawkins was not an experience he ever wanted to relive. The startling rustling seemed to rush after him through the bush when he'd started for the road and the terror that summoned was more than unpleasant. Adrenaline carried him some of the way, but his head was pounding and he wasn't dressed for exercise and this stupid road was far from evenly paved, which made it more than a hazard in night lighting.

He made it to his destination anyways. Most of him really just wanted to reach his house and crash inside. A more humiliating but completely rampant part of him wanted to barricade it up after and then shelter on his bed.

It wasn't an option, though.

Not if the finally-dissipating smear on his pants and residual substance on his fingers meant something strange was happening in Hawkins (to him) again. 

He had to go somewhere that'd know how to deal with this. It wasn't like he did. He was the baddest bastard in his high school experience, but his reputation against demon monster dogs? Hah. 

But there _were_ people that knew what to do. Government guys, the police captain, a literal psychic, and the brats. All people he tried damn hard to avoid nowadays (even when it wasn't entirely possible when some of them showed up following Max around at the pool during Heather or one of the other's hours). 

The closest house he could reach on foot like this was one he really, really did not want to show up at. Especially not like this. Bleeding, hair ruined, clothes rumpled, sweaty and shaking and altogether a figure that was going to earn no favors at all with the head man in this building. Billy finally let his legs cease movement to bend in the Hargrove driveway and catch his breath before taking the next step towards making this night even worse than it was. 

Damn but he wanted a drink. Some ice cold water. Maybe some ice on the side for his forehead. Anything to make this awful shivering stop. 

But the shaking was only partially due to exertion and moreso due to the dread, the premonition hanging over him swearing he'd only just missed getting ripped apart by one of those dog monsters.

He had to grab Max and ignore all the discomfort that would inherently involve for both, because she had to pass the word and get involved in whatever had happened tonight and he could wash his hands of it. Leave it to the professionals (what a joke). 

The street lights were still on. Yellow came from the windows of the house itself. Neil's old car sat on the driveway near where he was catching his breath. He didn't want to do this. Go up there, disrupt whatever evening was happening, deal with the storm of mutual anger that disruption would inevitably cause. Not when he looked like this mess. Not when it was already this late. If he showed up now, Neil would be pissed. A weak part of Billy didn't want to see Neil pissed. Big picture, though. Big picture. His crash had rung far too many deja bu bells to the thing in the Byers's fridge last November. And yeah, there were others that knew more or as much as Max did. But he didn't feel like showing up at the Byers's house, not when he never really interacted with them (other than attacking a group of kids in their house). The brats all knew what Max did, but he couldn't even imagine going to any but her. Harrington knew too but that was just as off putting a thought as showing up to chat with the brats with Sinclair there. The cop was just as unappealing. 

You know what, _fine_. What a way to dodge the point. They _all_ were unappealing options, he didn't need to go through them one by one. They were always all going to be unappealing when they disliked him for the _incident_ and he felt the same distaste about them.

Max wasn't someone he wanted to see. Neil wasn't, not by a long shot. Even his best options were shit. 

With that lovely helplessness to steel himself, he walked to the front door and rapped against its surface.

* * *

There were lights on inside. After his knocking had sounded out, he could see those lights fade and shift; someone was standing, moving for the door, their body interfering with the lights inside.

There were dimmed noises too. A laugh track as identical as any other, some high obnoxious voice saying what was probably supposed to be a joke. He could practically _smell_ the 50's from here. Neil had always loved the nuclear family sitcoms. It made sense that he'd be watching them on reruns with his new, 'better' family. Why not? Let him. Let him drown in all the shows that he liked and that tore him apart to see because he'd somehow 'botched' in living through that bullshit his first time around with a family.

Billy noticed absently that his jaw was aching; he'd been gritting it. Now conscious of the motion, he forced himself to relax. It didn't stop the thoughts, the anger, the resentment he felt towards how Neil acted like he and his mom were disappointments when they didn't live up to some fictional nuclear family's perfection. Like hell did anyone. 

And besides, like hell did any of those televised families include the enforcement behind the ever-perfect responsibility shown to parents by respectful and responsible sons or the way countertops drew blood when mothers were hit into them. 

It was a relief when that muted but still too-audible noise shut off. When something that was still causing his heart to pound so sickeningly needed to be addressed by one of the brats that had involvement in the weird psychic/monster business of this shitty town, the last thing he needed was the sounds of 'family night' distracting him. 

Dimmed voices said something he couldn't hear and then footsteps and shifting window lights heralded the approach of someone inside the house. Three choices narrowed down based on sound alone: too heavy to be Susan's ever-hesitant stride, too militaristically-even to be Max's stomping. That left just one.

Billy knew it was Neil seconds before the door tugged open and the younger Hargrove felt the ever-typical effects of shrinking down, down, down in the shadow his father left over him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank those who kudos'd, read, and especially commented during this wait. I hope you continue to enjoy!

**Author's Note:**

> Update wise, this will be a multichap plotfic. Updates will span from daily to having weeks in between. That'll depend on inspiration and comments as well as my workload. Just know that this _will_ be finished.  
> Thank you for your time!


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